While Martin Luther King Jr. fought for human
right s and justice
here in the United States, his principles are shared
by those
fighting for similar basic freedoms in today's Middle
East.

"I think there's no more suitable place in the world than
the
Middle East to put his claims to the test, "Geoffery Aronson,
director
of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, D.C.,
said last
week at a Martin Luther King Day Symposium forum on
"Applying Martin
Luther King's Principles to the Middle East: Working
for Human Rights and
Justice.

While Aronson conceded that the Middle East would seem an
"awkward
welcoming place for the idea of equality and the brotherhood of
all
people," he said that its distinction as the birthplace
of
Christianity-"the creed that formed the basis of King's view of
the
world and inspired his call to racial equality and
non-violence"-makes
it the ideal place to practice King's
principles.

"We have a long
way to go in order to realize the ideal that King
articulated," Aronson
said, "King would certainly have been
disheartened by the state of affairs
in the Middle East today, but no
matter how grim the reality of human
rights, Martin Luther King's
dogmatic faith in the power and righteous of
his beliefs is an
important message for thos among us who have an interest
in human
rights in the Middle East."

Aronson said that fighting
for human rights in the Middle East
requires hard work and an undaunting
commitment to do what is
right.

"So often in that part of the
world, there's no rational, material
basis for hope that regimeswill
change or end, that religious
discrimination will end, that national
oppression will end or that
civic life will improve for the majority of
the people," he said. "We
live with the fear, with the understanding, with
the realization that
much of what we do may not matter much.

Why
do we do this? It isn't with concrete hope or expectation that
things are
actually going to get better. we do it because it's the
right thing to do.
You have to revert to a more basic state in the
righteousness or the
correctness of the cause that you are
supporting.

"Like Martin
Luther King himself, human rights activists have to
do something that I
think is quite rare in the 1990s. They must not
only believe in, but have
the courage of their convictions to seek
inspiration and continue to
struggle against inequity."

Sponsored by the Center of Middle
Eastern and North African
Studies and the Department of Near Eastern
Studies, the forum also
featured U-M alums Karen Kennedy of Amnesty
International, Shira
Robinson of Human Rights Watch and graduate student
Rochelle Davis,
who spoke about their experiences as human rights
activists.